My strong impression is that the House as a whole was in great measure unprepared for what it had to face.  You could feel surprise in the air as Sir Edward Grey developed his wonderful speech.  Men, shaken away from all traditional attitudes, responded from the depths of themselves to an appeal which none of us had ever heard before.

Having failed to secure my place on the Irish benches, I was sitting on one of the chairs close by the Sergeant at Arms, just inside the bar of the House, so that I saw at once both sides of the assembly:  there were no parties that day.  The Foreign Secretary’s speech, intensely English, with all the quality that is finest in English tradition, clearly did not in its opening stages carry the House as a whole.  Passages struck home, here and there, to men not to parties, kindling individual sentiments.  Appeal to a common feeling for France did not elicit a general response; but here and there in every quarter there were those who leapt to their feet and cheered, waving the papers that were in their hands; and the two figures that stand out most vividly in my recollection were Willie Redmond, our leader’s brother, and Arthur Lynch.  We were in a very different atmosphere already from the days of the Boer War.

It was not until the speaker reached in his statement the outrage committed on Belgian neutrality that feeling manifested itself universally.  Appeal was made to the sense of honour, of fair play, of respect for pledges, by a man as well fitted to make such an appeal as ever addressed any audience; and it was the case of Belgium that made the House of Commons unanimous.

Later in the evening speeches from the Radical group made it clear that unanimity was not yet definitive.  Labour was hesitant; Germany had still to complete Sir Edward Grey’s work.  With this disposition in England itself, what was likely to be the feeling in Ireland?  Nobody, I think, expected that anything would be said from our benches.  There had been no consultation in our party, such as was customary and almost obligatory on important occasions.  I have said before that Redmond’s position was by understanding and agreement that of chairman, not of leader.  Mr. Dillon, by far the most important of his colleagues, was away in Ireland.  Any action that Redmond took he must take not merely in an unusual but in a new capacity, as leader, at a great moment, acting in his own right.

Neither had there been any consultation between him and the Government.  He knew only what the general public knew.  Parts of Sir Edward Grey’s speech were to him, as to the other members of the House, a surprise at many points.  At one point it certainly was.  After summing up the situation, first in relation to France, then in relation to Belgium, the Foreign Secretary, speaking with the utmost gravity, foretold for Great Britain terrible suffering in this war, “whether we are in it or whether we stand aside.”  He made it clear that the island